Credit cards, ATM cards and other ID cards having a magnetic strip are widely used today as an identifying medium for gaining access to secure networks storing the card holder's resources and other sensitive information. However, equally ubiquitous today are cellular telephones and other mobile devices which have computing power and a much greater potential for secure access to and interaction with secure networks. At present, the use of mobile devices as a means of authentication to facilitate access and interaction with other computing devices and secure networks is largely untapped.
Another development potentially adding synergism to the use of mobile and other computing devices as authentication mediums is the move toward cloud computing. Cloud computing is Internet-based computing, whereby shared resources such as software and other information are provided to a variety of computing devices on-demand via the Internet. It represents a new consumption and delivery model for IT services where resources are available to all network-capable devices, as opposed to older models where resources were stored locally across the devices. Cloud computing typically involves the provision of dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources as a service over the Internet. It is a by-product and consequence of the ease-of-access to remote computing sites provided by the Internet. The move toward cloud computing opens up a new potential for mobile and other networked devices to work in conjunction with each other to provide greater interaction and a much richer experience with respect to third party and a user's own resources.